


Folie à deux

by Innsmouth



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:36:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3166760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innsmouth/pseuds/Innsmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of a ship collision, Captain Vriska Serket must contend with inept crewmen, catastrophic accidents, and a murderous stowaway.</p><p>None of these compare to the memories locked in her treasonous head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Folie à deux

**Author's Note:**

  * For [runobody2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/runobody2/gifts).



The panicked screaming of the klaxons makes Vriska want to pin her ears flat to her skull against the noise. She cannot afford willful ignorance now; in a ship-to-ship collision (a _ramming,_ says a part of her thinkpan indignantly) time is of the essence, and the fate of the day rests on decisive action. As captain of her motley crew of washouts and criminals, responsibility lies heavy on Vriska's shoulders, like an imperial mantle she itches to shed.

(It should not have been her. There were others to lead. Vriska wanted fame, glory, accolades, not the burden of rank.)

Myrond lumbers by her towards the helmsblock as fast as his hulking frame will carry him. The screams and tortured mechanical shrieks from the dimly-lit warren of rooms raise the increasingly plausible possibility that something has happened to the helm's wetware. She can almost make out words from that long-disused tongue; something about teeth in the darkness.

In the pulsing amber emergency lights, the backs of Vriska's hands look almost sun-washed where they splay across the primary control console. Between golden-hued flashes, the crippled and mangled Imperial scout launch outside her porthole hangs in space like a condemned man on the gallows. The scarlet sigils of the Cruelest Bar gleam on the near wing, bloody as the mark of a wrathful god.

Vriska straightens the bent shaft of the primary intercom mic and taps it experimentally with a claw. "Ooookay, testing - how bad are we fucked?"

A buzzing roar of static scores through the blaring alarms. "---ot entirely. Hull breach in aft sector three, coolant leaking everywhere, and the wetware keeps screaming about grasping hands and teeth."

"Patch it, contain it, and club the fucking hunk of green matter over what passes for a head if it doesn't stop screeching about doom and start calculating jump routes. Casualties?"

"Dakkan's working on the coolant situation, but his suit's damaged and he thinks he's going to lose a finger or two, Myrond's on the helm, and Skarsa and Mihell are just _gone_."  
  
"What about Gelreh?" Vriska asks, gnawing at a bit of loose skin on one blue-painted lip. The tip of her fang snags on a line of scar tissue; she really does do this too often.  
"Speaking. Patches are in place but I've ripped something in my shoulder--"

"Then stop bitching like a wiggler and finish the job," snaps Vriska, and keys the mic off. A low undercurrent of fear streams cool from belly to groin; they've been tracked, they've been found, they've been disabled by some suicidally brave lawtroll, and now the Bar is closing in.

She can imagine a razor-edged, wicked grin and a wagging finger - _justice prevails, sister mine_ \- before she slams the door on that particular vague and hazy memory hard enough to feel it reverberate in the depths of her thinkpan. There is a time and a place for failed quadrantmates gone by, and that place is right down the load gaper.

In the distant aft of the ship, she can feel the _Audax's_ engines thrum and rumble as they struggle to free her from the scout ship's barbed embrace. Gelreh must be doing better on the patch job than she had anticipated. The deck beneath her feet shudders, gradually lists to starboard, then slowly eases back into position.

It had always been like that with Terezi; weaknesses found and exploited, opportunities availed of, concessions made, and equilibrium invariably reached after they tired of gouging at the same old vulnerabilities. Familiar squabbles had a sort of appeal. Whatever Terezi's myriad faults, she could always be counted on to be the most interesting opponent, if not the easiest or most fun.

The deck under her feet lurches sharply, and Vriska stumbles for purchase on the swiftly tilting surface. A glance at the crippled hulk out the porthole confirms that the _Audax_ and her crew are well and truly snared on its wreckage. Frustrated, she aims a  vicious kick at a loose bit of deck plating. The flat piece of steel goes spinning off like a discus, only to loop around and return from whence it came.

They'd always come back for one another, too. No matter the argument or slight or outright insult, they'd always come back. Terezi would show up at the mouth of Spidermom's cavern bearing a fresh corpse, or Vriska would let herself be caught dangling a clumsily-made scalemate from the branches of Terezi's hive, and everything would be comfortably contentious again. Her acrimonious patches with Terezi had a regularity and ease that her other attempts at intertrollsonal relations lacked. It was familiar in its fury and frustration, almost comforting. In the past, Vriska had taken it for granted.

In the present, she curses Terezi's name and all the other budding legislacerators as the Bar's markings burn themselves into her vision. Pyrope probably washed out of legislaceratorial training as surely as Vriska had washed out of the fleet, and had most likely been culled for it. Vriska is no sickly-sweet, starry-eyed romantic. She knows how it goes.

She wraps a clawed finger around the stem of the mic and tugs it upright from where it's been listing gently to one side. "Gelreh, how's that patch job coming?"

Static, like waves on the shore of her wigglerhood hive.

"Gelreh?"

Over the comm system, someone gurgles wetly.

 _Thump._  
  
"Gelreh, you nook-sucking piece of shit, if you're trying to fuck with me--"  
  
"Your accomplice has been dealt with," says a static-fuzzed voice on the other end of the line. "What now?"

Vriska snarls, then pops a thumb over the mic and calls to the nearest two crewmen.  "Skierd. Ashvei. Head to Aft Three, full loadout. We've got a boarder." Ashvei grunts and hefts her warhammer before barrelling down the ill-lit corridor, while Skierd at least has the presence of mind to check the clip in his rifle before following in her wake.

Despite the klaxons, the relative quiet is stifling. Vriska settles down to wait, which has never been something that she's been particularly good at doing. Mindfang, in her glory, could wait for sweeps in pursuit of victory. Vriska has difficulty waiting for half an hour. She is not Mindfang, and deep down, she knows that she never will be; she is too petty, too impulsive, to eager to sacrifice her assets for personal glory. The knowledge that she'll never be the best eats at her like a soarbeast picking at her bile sac.

The steel toe of her boot rings a tiny, clanging chorus on the deck plating as she taps her foot in mingled impatience and irritation. In the distance, grunts and gunfire echo down the dim-lit aft corridor. She keys the mic again, forcefully. "All clear down there?"

The static hangs for a few seconds, washing in and out like a tide, and then the other voice speaks. "Certainly! The penalty for your crimes is death, so I was kind of busy applying that immutable law to your henchtrolls."

Before a seething Vriska can interject, the voice continues, "And as long as we're formally speaking...Vriska Serket, de facto captain of the  _Phidippus Audax_ , formerly of the Imperial Fleet Officer Training Program, you are hereby found guilty of piracy, smuggling, dereliction of duty, high treason in the dereliction of said duty, and generally being a huge bitch and a heinously shitty excuse for a troll. You have one hour to surrender peacefully, after which I will retrieve you myself by use of force."

 _"Get off my ship,"_ snarls Vriska through bared, clenched fangs, slamming the mic key hard enough to crack the plastic.

"If you want me gone..." says the legislacerator, and she laughs, a raspy chuckle. "Come and get me, sister mine."

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be something far larger and more ambitious, but due to an exploding computer, some crazy personal nonsense, and a lack of time resulting from all of those things, I didn't quite make it. My apologies, but I hope you enjoy it.
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you to Ursula and Dax, for making this possible at the eleventh hour.


End file.
